Oct. 24: The Evolution of LGBTQ+ Young Adult Lit: From Sad-Eyed Loners to Superheroes

Discover exciting trends in young adult literature, expand your reading list, and play a trivia game with prizes! Christine Jenkins, co-author of Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature, will take you on a whirlwind tour of five decades of this exciting and now booming genre. Author Rachel Gold will read from the new edition of her groundbreaking novel, Being Emily, and explore the future of YA literature with queer and trans content. Reception to follow. Books will be for sale and authors will be available for signing!READ MORE

Come see me in September if you’re near Atlanta; Portsmouth, NH; Boston; or St. Cloud, MN!

Sept. 1: AJC Decatur Book Festival

“Who Even Am I?” panel, Saturday, 10:00-10:45 YA Stage — Adolescence is a time for figuring out big things, including who you are. But how do you do that when your whole world is turned upside down? Details here.READ MORE

Below you’ll find a PDF of the presentation “Gender in 50 Min or Less” that I delivered at the Golden Crown Literary Society annual convention in early July. I’ve also tried to list most of the papers, articles and books that I read while thinking about my gender presentation.

I probably forgot some resources, so this list might expand later. At some point I hope to add my notes or a link to the video if it’s public (apologies to people who weren’t at the conference if the PDF doesn’t entirely make sense without the notes).

Thanks to the Golden Crown board for inviting me to speak, and to my audience for laughing at all my jokes!READ MORE

Because I like science, I read a lot of it while updating Being Emily. This ended up with many books and studies turning into only a few sentences on the page, but hopefully they’re the right, impactful sentences.

Here are some of the core concepts I heightened or added in the new edition of Being Emily:

Being transgender (and gender identity in general) is influenced to some degree by genetics, hormones and hormone receptors.

The new, anniversary edition of Being Emily is now available! Later today/this week I will answer some questions (lower in this post) and talk about the process of editing Being Emily.

First here’s some very important ordering info: on Amazon.com you can order the new paperback edition of Being Emily, but the current kindle edition is the old, 2012 version. If you want the new BE as an ebook, please order it from Bella Books. On the Bella site, you can get the new version, which I abbreviate as 2BE, as an epub, mobi or pdf file. It will work on all the major eReaders and tablet apps. The kindle format is .mobi. READ MORE

We’re less than two weeks to the launch of the new edition of Being Emily! I’m super excited. I got to add about 25% more content to the original story, plus there’s a whole new epilogue (set 10 years after the original story), and there’s a great intro.

Editing and rewriting parts of a book that’s already published was a lot harder than I expected. I wanted to keep everything that readers have loved and add new material in a way that didn’t clash with the original.READ MORE

A recent study displays the variety, diversity and wonder of gender identity among nonbinary people. As someone who struggles to describe my own sense of gender (when I have one), it’s deeply life-affirming to see other people say a lot of the same things I’ve said.

Often when I’m trying to explain nonbinary genders to people, I have to start by explaining what binary means: “Woman/man, you have to pick from one of two categories, that’s the binary. Some people don’t fit neatly into those categories, they’re nonbinary.” After I say that, I often still get blank looks—because woman/man is so ingrained in our culture it doesn’t make sense to a lot of people (who fit inside that binary) that there are experiences outside of what feels to them like natural categories.READ MORE

QUEER YA with Second Story & Queer Voices — Oct. 8 @ 2 p.m.

Second Story Reading Series, in collaboration with Queer Voices Reading Series, will host a QUEER YA event on Sunday, October 8th at 2pm at The Loft Literary Center. The event will feature readings by local LGBTQ authors, a panel discussion, and book sales by Addendum Books. Author Molly Beth Griffin (Silhouette of a Sparrow) will read from Either/Or, a young adult novel in progress, as part of a 2017 Minnesota Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant.

If you missed it in the midst of the hurricanes, a bunch of fundamentalist Christians put out the “Nashville Statement” at the end of August, attacking LGBTQ people. This is nothing new, but it comes at a time when other attacks have been leveled against the LGBTQ community—and this can make it particularly scary and damaging.

(If you’re not a reader of long blog posts, please scroll to the video below in the seat belt section and watch that. It will make you smile and feel wonder, joy, blessing or all three.)READ MORE